


Eyes Open, Distance Closed

by Nimgrade



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Aromantic, Asexual Relationship, Character Study, Eye Gazing, Holding Hands, M/M, Metaphysical Cuddling I Suppose?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-04
Updated: 2019-08-04
Packaged: 2020-07-31 08:08:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 546
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20111878
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nimgrade/pseuds/Nimgrade
Summary: It's easy to be a mind-in-a-body, and to converse with other minds-in-bodies, ignoring the irony of lofty thoughts transpiring through a medium of gross matter. But to be one body in contact with another... it's ineffable in the most terrifying, exhilarating sense of the word.





	Eyes Open, Distance Closed

Physicality offers its own peculiar paths to enlightenment.

It's easy—in fact it's always been easy, effortless after a hundred years, let alone several thousand—to inhabit a form. Not so much second nature as nature itself. But it's difficult, difficult, difficult to position oneself in contact with other forms. Angels tend not to bother with it whatsoever, standing serenely in conversational arcs, close enough to hear but not to touch. Many of them numb their nerves, if they deign to have them at all, just as they decline to eat or sully themselves in other ways.

Aziraphale can't help but enjoy good food, or the cut and material of his suits, or the smell of his ancient books. Still it's difficult, so difficult, to reach out with one hand and find another, apart. Forget knowing what to do with it once it's in your grasp. On the first try he just lifted it gingerly, as if expecting the touch to burn. When Crowley cocked his head, fixing him with an odd, fond, wondering look, Aziraphale dropped it... but didn't fumble for an excuse. And the next time, it was Crowley who took Aziraphale's hand, gripping tightly but tracing the creases of his palm ever so gently.

It's easy to be a mind-in-a-body, and to converse with other minds-in-bodies, ignoring the irony of lofty thoughts transpiring through a medium of gross matter. But to be one body in contact with another... it's ineffable in the most terrifying, exhilarating sense of the word. 

The world didn't end. It still exists, in all its weight and grit and thereness. _Hereness_. They are here, too, the two _here_sjust inches apart but still unique. Separation is glorious in its own right, a synapse sparking with all things said and unsaid. Really, the scary thing is not distance, but the potential for closing it, suddenly and irrevocably, of slipping past one another into a joint self that can reach and reach across the chasm but never brush the fingers of its mirror image. But they need not fear this. The laws of the physical universe will never sacrifice closeness for oneness. Tonight, they can let their bodies fall together and rest, and in the morning each will still be there for the other, still whole and present and dear. 

What a relief to drop all affect, to relinquish last defenses and just feel the weight of their juxtaposed existence. The electromagnetic repulsion of their atoms draws the thinnest possible boundary between them. A tactile affirmation: corporeality and personhood, both unbreachable. 

The breathtakingly intimate mutuality of eyes gazing into eyes, looking not quite all the way through, not into the matter itself but at what animates it—something visible only when each looker is caught fast and strung along in the other's line of sight. _You're real_; _I see you seeing me_; _you see me seeing you_.

After hours of this, they understand a little better why humans might want to breathe each other's breath.

From the beginning, humans have constructed elaborate rituals of internal and external touch, playing upon nerve endings with the subtlety and crudeness of various percussionists. No such music for the two of them to compose. But, there is artistry in their touch all the same.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you to my friend [aretia](https://archiveofourown.org/users/aretia/pseuds/aretia) for encouraging me to post this! Please check out her incredible writing, for this fandom and others.


End file.
